pieces

This YouTube thing is dangerously addictive. I rediscover it every few months.

so funny:

We went to Cowboys’ preseason game against the 49ers this weekend. I’d never been to an NFL game (I know, hard to believe) and I had to get to at least one in Dallas before they tear the stadium down. We got the preseason game as part of a package with the Thanksgiving game, and Caroline (who had never been either) drove up with us.

We had corner seats that turned out to be a great view. I can’t wait ’til Thanksgiving!

We also got to see Tamara and Lori and check out their new place, which is right in the heart of downtown Dallas. It’s a neat apartment and the building has a great rooftop view with a pool. It was fun to walk outside and be right across the street from so many bars.

I’ll share some pictures in a later post.

It’s official. Pluto is no longer a planet.

As of 2pm today, Pluto is no longer one of the Elite Eight that orbit our sun. The title “Plutonian” failed to pass, so Pluto and three similar objects will now be known as “dwarf planets.”

My dad called this morning to ask how I was voting. We both found it more than a little odd that scientists were putting it to a vote. I mean, what step in the scientific method says “step up to the booth and cast your ballot”? It has been awhile, but I don’t remember that part.

And no, I didn’t get a vote.

This is a couple of weeks late, but I thought it was still worth posting:

As promised, I have pictures and stories from my road trip with Rebecca last weekend.

We left the resort around 10:30am. Our first picture comes from Mineral Wells. We didn’t get a picture of the massive Baker Hotel, even though it was kind of neat (and weird, as it was the tallest thing around for miles), but rather this police car:

We followed this guy for awhile:

We decided that since we had time, we should stop in Dublin, Texas:

This place really was fun. They exploited both their claims to fame as much as they possibly could, with a combination of Irish and Dr. Pepper murals and references. It was impressive.

We ate at Our Place, which had a great home-cooked buffet, Dublin Dr. Pepper on tap, and a bunch of locals. We were the only non-familiar faces. It was 11:30am on a Sunday. Check out the parking lot. It’s full.

We took a tour of the bottling plant, and tried a Frosty Dr. Pepper. It was a Blue Bell chocolate shake with Dr. Pepper syrup and a cherry. Yum!

The tour:

High-tech bottle marking system:

We then had to stop off the Dutchman’s Hidden Valley. This treasure is the only thing around for miles, and has some of the best taffy I’ve ever had.

Rebecca wanted this picture of the Eidson House Bed and Breakfast in Hamilton for Dominic:

I took the opportunity to get a shot of the shop across the street (what a view!):

another Texas treasure:

AT-STs?

My favorite shot:

And last, for Ian:

for the next few days at least:

(image from amazon)

Rebecca and I went up to Possum Kingdom Lake (about 90 minutes west of Ft. Worth) this past weekend. We were hired by a real estate development company to do a public astronomy event to showcase their property. It really was surprisingly dark, as even with the lights on the marinas and at the office we could easily see the Milky Way. I didn’t realize it was so hilly there, but it definitely blocked out the light from the DFW area.

We drove up on Saturday and brought two department telescopes. We ate at the development office, which was actually also a restaurant (I’m thinking that after they sell all the property, and even right now, it is some sort of country club for their residents). It was good food - once again, Rebecca and I ordered the same thing, just as we did after we went shopping at the outlet mall a couple of weeks ago (last weekend?). Although we had to go back into town (the nearest WalMart was 30+ miles away) for batteries, and the finder scope of my telescope had alignment issues and I was never able to use the auto-finder, the event went off fine. However, a fire started just after dusk to the southwest of us, and by the time the event ended, it was so hazy we could only see a few stars. I had brought my own telescope out to take advantage of the dark skies after the program, but we decided not to drag it out after all.

The company put us up in a nice resort hotel on the other side of the lake, so we went back and vegged and watched some bad television. (That’s where the Twin Beef comes in from my previous post - I thought I had seen cheetos in the vending machine, but it ended up being the awful styrofoam cheese puffs that only wish they were Cheetos - and of course the Twin Beef, which is actually worse than a Slim Jim, if that’s possible.) It was a beautiful place - the rooms were large, the lake was beautiful, and the resort had a pool, golf course, and spa, although we didn’t take advantage of any of those on our short visit.

The resort:

The pool:

The room:

The lake:

The next day we had breakfast at the resort. They did not have any indoor seating, so we sat outside, which was nice since we had the deck to ourselves. The manager came out and talked to us about how much he loved working in such a secluded place, and ended up giving us our breakfast free.

Our adventure really started on our drive home. We took our time, taking about 7 hours for the 200 mile trip. We took tons of pictures on the road, and made several detours. I’ll post more details in a few days.